Mating In Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence

Mating In Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
Esther Perel
Harper
ISBN: 978-0-06-075364-1
Non-Fiction, Adult, Relationships
Reviewed by Frederick Noronha

Erotic intelligence? Just what's that?
You're hooked in the subtitle of this book itself. NYC's couples and family therapist Esther Perel's book promises a "bold, provocative new take on intimacy and sex".
She promises to unlock the "complexities of sustaining desire". Secrets of "what it takes to bring lust home". In today's sexually surcharged world, who doesn't want that?
We find various explanations for why things change over time. For instance "In the early stages of a relationship, women are genetically programmed to have a high sex drive in order to form a 'pair bond'. After this bond has been sealed, the woman's sexual appetite usually declines, but a man's tends to remain the same, in order to protect him from being cuckolded by another male. Researchers from Germany have found that, four years into a secure relationship, less than halfof 30-year-old women wanted regular sex, compared to between 60 and 80 per cent of men."
But things can be tough to accept, when one or the other party in a relationship feels neglected and let-down. After all, in our day and age, we all have high expectations. We know that "sexual intimacy has the ability to amplify the emotional bond between two people, which is important in long-term relationships".
Author Perel's title comes from D.H.Lawrence's poem, 'Wild Things In Captivity', in which he argues that wild creatures don't breed in captivity, all men are in a captivity, and need to "break the cage".
Her central point comes out in the first chapter of the introduction itself:
“The story of sex in committed modern couples often tell of a dwindling desire and includes a long list of sexual alibis, which claim to explain the inescapable death of
eros.... Today's twosomes are too busy, too stressed, too involved in child rearing, and too tired for sex. Now that these men and women (of the era of sexual liberation) and the generations who have followed can have as much sex as they want, they seem to have lost their desire for it."
Perel questions the logic of judging sexual relations "almost exclusively on the frequency and quantity". She sees deeper questions. How does one reconcile sexuality with domesticity, she asks?
She raises important questions early on: Does good intimacy always lead to good sex? Why is it that the transition to parenthood so often spells erotic disaster? Why is the forbidden so erotic? Is it possible to want what we already have?
Belgium-bred, Israel-educated and US-trained Perel's suggestions are provocative: "I'd like to suggest that we might have more exciting, playful, even frivolous sex if we were less constrained by our cultural penchant for democracy in the bedroom."
Many of her observations are bang on. For instance: "Contemporary couples invest more in love than ever before; yet, in a cruel twist of fate, it is this very model of love and marriage that is behind the exponential rise in the divorce rate."
Do her arguments convince? Check out the book itself for more, and to find out where its logic would end up taking you Here's the author's punchline from Chapter 1: "Never was my Q rating as high – at parties, in cabs, at the nail salon, on airplanes, with teenagers,
with my husband, you name it -- as when I began writing a book about sex."
In a word, beyond the hype a topic like this generates, I found this book provocative and well-argued.